Movie review: 'Monsters vs. Aliens' features ideal giant woman

Al Alexander

Friday

Mar 27, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 27, 2009 at 11:56 AM

While "Monster vs. Aliens'' won’t draw any favorable comparisons to something as imaginative as the latter’s Oscar-winning "WALL-E,'' it will certainly entertain the heck out of you without insulting your intelligence with cheap pop-culture gags.

Call a shrink if you must, but when I tell you I’m madly in love with a computer-animated 50-foot woman, I’m in complete control of my faculties. And to see my darling Susan (aka Ginormica) cast in a new digital 3-D format that renders her so lustfully real, it was nearly impossible to resist the urge to leap out and grab any part of her I could realistically wrap my arms around.

OK, I know, it’s not like I haven’t seen a 50-foot women before. There was Alison Hayes in 1958’s "The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman'' and Daryl Hannah in the 1993 remake. But neither of those bodacious babes holds a size 63 stiletto to the endless charms of Reese Witherspoon in "Monsters vs. Aliens.''

It’s not that she’s hotter than the other two, it’s that she’s drawn that way by a horde of computer geeks who took "Weird Science'' much too seriously.

Thank God that they did, because they’ve created the ideal woman, one who manages to look incredibly sexy even when she’s kicking alien buttocks from here to the next universe.

Yes, Susan’s got it all: looks, personality (courtesy of Witherspoon’s perky voice) and the resourcefulness to strap a couple of large convertibles to her feet to skate down the hills of San Francisco in retreat from an equally immense alien robot. Best of all, she’s comfortable with her own body and confident in her abilities.

Or, at least she is by the time her galactic adventure runs its course in a story that serves both as homage to the classic B horror movies of the 1950s and a welcome platform for female empowerment.

It’s also a refreshing change of pace for DreamWorks in its decade-long struggle to enter the Pixar age. While "Monster vs. Aliens'' won’t draw any favorable comparisons to something as imaginative as the latter’s Oscar-winning "WALL-E,'' it will certainly entertain the heck out of you without insulting your intelligence with cheap pop-culture gags.

Not that there aren’t a few here and there, but they can be excused this time because most of them are actually funny, such as a demand by the president (voice of Stephen Colbert) to "get me our finest scientific minds,'' to which his lackeys immediately place a call to India.

And while the kiss-up nods to the boss, DreamWorks Chairman Steven Spielberg, in referencing his alien fantasies "E.T.'' and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind,'' are a bit much, they are admittedly clever.

Ditto for Rainn Wilson’s voicing of the film’s resident villain, the four-eyed megalomaniac Galaxhar, who clones himself into an army of invaders hell-bent on taking over the Earth. He’s a blast despite being stuck with a character lacking in depth and requisite evilness.

At least Galaxhar registers more resonantly than the imprisoned "monsters'' the sadistic Gen. W. R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) recruits for a "Dirty Dozen''-like mission to thwart the fanatical menace.

These monsters include a mad doctor (Hugh Laurie from "House'') whose failed experimentations transformed him into giant cockroach, "The Fly''; a massive Godzilla-like grub taller than most skyscrapers; a hybrid creature (half fish, half ape) affectionately called the Missing Link (Will Arnett); and a brainless gelatinous green mass known simply as B.O.B. (Seth Rogen).

The main problem is that none of the supporting mutants are as interesting as their leader, the statuesque Susan, who, when the film opens, is a spineless, normal-sized bride-to-be kowtowing to the every whim of her TV weatherman fiancé, Derek (a terrifically smarmy Paul Rudd).

But minutes before she heads down the aisle to wed the jerk, Susan is struck by a meteorite containing a foreign substance (no, not A-Rod’s steroids) that cause her to grow to 49 feet, 11 inches, a height deemed unacceptable even by the folks at "America’s Next Top Model.''

Personally, I wasn’t so much frightened as I was amazed at how her wedding dress was able to expand with her. Apparently the same people who designed the stretchable britches for the Incredible Hulk also designed her gown.

At any rate, Susan will soon discover that her tallness is not a curse, but a blessing for all mankind – or should I say, womankind? The latter would be more accurate, because it’s impossible to see Susan as anything but a terrific role model for girls – or anyone deemed too this, or too that – bombarded by images of what society says they should be.

Just as heroic are the teams of technicians and animators who’ve created one of the most spectacular 3-D experiences on film. You wish they had been a bit more adventurous than simply flinging objects at the audience, but what a thrill it is to feel the rush every time you’re sure one of those balls, needles or blunt objects is going to penetrate your brain.

Never has animated 3-D looked so real and never has it been so smoothly incorporated into the storyline. But then, like most people, I couldn’t care a rat’s behind about how it was done. I’m more interested in how it works. And in "Monsters vs. Aliens,'' it works well, especially if you’re a red-blooded male who likes his heroines long, tall and Amazon.